CCIE - The Plan

Hi there, first of all, I’d like thank everyone for the congratulations messages. As a thank you back, I’ll share with you some of the resources I used for taking the CCIE Lab exam.

I'll write in more details about the CCIE journey on another post.

CCIE = Commitment

If you want or you’re planning to take your CCIE exam, fist you should read the content on the links below:

https://lkhill.com//ccie-preparation-commitment/

Enough time to study

Everyone has it’s own schedule, you have to figure out the one suitable for you. During 2019, I was studying around 2/3/4 hours during weekdays and 4/8 hours during Saturday and rest on Sunday. Sometimes I changed rest days between Saturday and Sunday. This schedule didn’t work for me. I was forgetting easily most of the concepts, and I wasn’t spending enough time to lab. If I had taken the exam during that time, I would definitely fail the exam.

During 2020 I changed the schedule a little bit, during the weekdays the same amount of time, but now I was starting my weekend on Friday 10:00pm until Saturday 3/4:00am. Then I would start on Saturday 4:00pm until Sunday 3/4:00am. Using this strategy I was able to get more hours for labs but I wasn’t resting enough between Saturday and Sunday and sometimes it caused what I felt like hangover because of studies.

This year I used a very strict approach, I scheduled 6 hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Saturday and Sunday scheduled 10 hours. Most of the foundation topics became easier to remember and I was able to lab 4 to 5 hours straight without being tired.

My schedule changed a lot as I was looking often for ways to get the most of my time, so I hope this gives an idea for your schedule.

You can't manage what you can't measure

It’s important that you know how much time you’re spending on your studies, specifically for each topic. Don’t just assume you’re studying a lot. Be specific on how much time you allocate per topic, this will allow you to allocate more time on your weak topics.

I used a daily and a monthly tracker. This year it was around 2397 hours.

Resources !?

Les Brown and Tony Robbins - probably you will not see this type of recommendation anywhere for CCIE but trust me, you have to prepare yourself emotionally as well. Unfortunately I don't have the "quit button" so sometimes I found myself hitting the head against the wall just trying to understand the concepts. Sometimes all you need is different a perspective for the same problem.

Relax - sometimes you may feel frustrated, upset, sad, weak.. have something or someone around you that helps you quit emotional states will be very helpfull.

CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure Training Videos - a lot of hints for the lab

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/learning-plan-detail-standard?ltui__urlRecordId=a1c3i0000015c1OAAQ&ltui__urlRedirect=learning-plan-detail-standard

CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure Equipment and Software List - during your labs, use the same version for IOS/IOS XE/Python...

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/article/ccie-enterprise-infrastructure-equipment-and-software-list

SD-ACCESS - I used Cisco Sandbox and Cisco Demo Cloud

SD-WAN - sometimes I used Cisco Sandbox, and I also built my own lab

CBT Nuggets – they introduce you to advanced concepts on an easy to digest format

Network Lessons – their material is also easy to understand, especially if you’re trying to get your feet wet on CCIE concepts

Rob Riker's Tech Channel – Youtube channel. Great content for free with real hands-on

?INE – advanced concepts delivered for expert individuals.

Micronics training – if you don’t know Narbik Kocharians you don’t want to become a CCIE :-)

I personally didn’t attend CBT/INE/Micronics trainings as I preferred to invest more time on self-study building the labs for myself or using what I could find on internet. It is up to choose the past path for you.

CCIE now what?

I spent more than 5.000 hours seated, I lost weight, I can’t sleep early and I can’t sleep for too long… so far it’s been amazing, except that I don’t look much younger, so if you still wanna take your shot, go for it.

I'll see you on the next one ;-)